Max slowly crept through the living room, careful to avoid any of the toys from his younger siblings strewn on the floor. His foot decided to be a jerk and try to trip him over a small toy. Max stumbled and almost fell on a bin of Legos.He managed to catch himself just in time, grabbing onto the arm of the couch. Letting out a breath, he stood and more carefully moved to the helmet sitting by the big leather chair.

He let a wicked grin cut across his face. Fu fu fu. Another night and he would be off into the game. He still remembered the first time that he had snuck late at night to play on his sister’s neuroTech. It had been just a few nights after their mother had brought it home. His sister had commanded that none should touch the helmet, on pain of a beating and one of her special revenges. Max shivered at the thought, but his love of all games overcame the fear of his sister’s wrath, and so he had snuck out of his bed when everyone was asleep. His house was large and the living room was close to his room, so he had a good set up.

He shook his head, moving back to the present. He climbed into the chair, shifting till he was comfortable. He had learned from experience that it was better to take the time to get comfortable, rather than wake up with cricks in his body. When he was done, he slid the helmet on and pressed the on button.

Even after more than a month of using the neuroTech, Max still couldn’t get over the intro. This stupid cheesy bleep intro, he thought for the thousandth time. How could something as cool as a virtual reality console chose a frickin’ rainbow introduction? Max remembered when he had first logged on. He hadn’t expected it to be so much better than the other games he had played with the old consoles that his mom had brought from her work. He was practically drooling over the graphics. He was in a temple, one of those Asians ones. He moved around, his body feeling much lighter than his real, clumsy one. There was the sound of a gong and other instruments as a woman in glittering robes appeared. She did the whole adventurer speech and all that, then it was time to pick his appearance.

Max had been careful to REPLACE a new memory card so He wouldn’t caught by his sister, so he was free to make what ever kind of character he wanted. Max flipped through the different races and characteristics. He just went randomly and ended up with an some type of elf. He rushed through, hardly looking at what his character looked like.

*Ding*

Choose your name

After some serious debate and some laziness, he decided to go with Sleeps. It’s not like it mattered. Path wasn’t a mmorpg like Royal Road or any of those other games. There was no multiplayer option, which was unusual for virtual reality games. Even though the virtual reality had only been on the market for a few years, it was wildly popular, even if the price tag gave most people pause. 2,000 USD was nothing to sneeze at.

Max was pretty much rich. No other way to say it. His mother was one of the main developers of video games and dad was usually making lesson plans for his middle school class. You can guess who makes more money. Mom was a complete geek when anything with electricity was involved. She was always bringing games home to test out. Lately she had been in a really good mood since her company had formed a partnership with the Korean game company that developed Royal Road, Unicorn. They were making a new game or whatever. Max’s dad was also happy since he got to speak Korean with the developers they sent over. Don’t ask about his dad, the language geek. He was a social studies teacher and loved anything that was remotely related to history, including language. Max wasn’t sure just many how many languages his dad knew. So his mom had spread her love of games to most of her kids, while his dad had Maddy to talk history to.

Anyway, Max might have been too hasty when he chose his character. He was really glad that this game wasn’t a mmorpg when he saw his character, otherwise it would have attracted too much attention. Max’s type of character was usually a thief type, despite his clumsiness. So having a dark elf with long ebony hair wasn’t too bad. If it didn’t make his character. . . look like a girl.

The character was tall and thin like a model. He had round, big eyes, purple in color. Thankfully, it wasn’t actually a girl, but him being a boy and looking like one were two different things. Simply put, he was too flashy for Max’s taste. Even after a few weeks of playing, Max gave a start every time he saw himself. It had also taken some time for him to get used to the height difference.

Stolen story; please report.

The character was much taller than him in real life, so it had taken a lot of wasted hp till he could walk without killing himself. Max was really, really glad that it wasn’t a mmorpg at that point. Also, he needed to be able to move quietly, since like he said before, he was a thief type character. Bumping and tripping into stuff didn’t really help when you need to move sneakily. Like right now, he was following a mage for a quest. The mage was hogging all the rain or something, so the villagers had asked him for help. Max really didn’t pay attention to quests. He had tried to just to rush at the mage since he really didn’t seem that leveled. That was before he knew about the mage’s minions.

He had a special hatred for those minions. Just when Max was going to land a critical strike on the mage, the minions would swoop in, casting a heal spell on the mage and killing him. Of course, Max had forgotten to save, so he had to start the quest over again, this time being sure to save. Since then, Max had wasted 2 nights trying to kill the mage. Max smiled. Oh, he would kill this mage, if it was the last thing he did. He had gone back to the village, finding the most deadly poison that he could find. He was going to kill this guy in one shot. Max took out his ivory bow, careful when knocking the arrow so he wouldn’t kill himself. It was when he started to draw back his bow that it happened.

There was a beeping and ringing sound that almost shattered Max’s eardrums. He dropped his bow, almost shooting himself in the process. The sound continued, only growing louder. Clutching his ears, he kneeled, trying to block out the sound. He fell to the ground, trying to block the sound. There was one earth shaking beep, then the sound was suddenly cut off, leaving Max with ringing ears. Slowly, Max uncurled from his fetal position.

The game was glitching, the scenery flickering. The npcs looked like they were being chopped to pieces. Max couldn’t help being a little satisfied that the minions were being chopped up, but he wanted to do it himself. He was soon distracted from the npcs as 5 feet from him, there was. . . something. Max couldn’t find the words to describe it. It was almost as if the pixels of the game had been twisted into one mass. He called shakely, “Menu.” Nothing happened. Again he called, this time his voice more steady. While he did this, he watched the pixels. Their movement changed, rippling and expanding in every direction. Max was beginning to panic. His menu wasn’t coming up and Max didn’t really want to know what would happen if he got sucked into that thing. He snapped out of his paralysis, and turned to run away. But he tripped over a rock, falling into the ground. Even though it was a game, there was only so much it could do for naturally clumsy people.

He hit the ground hard, his palms taking the brunt of the fall. He felt something like a hand grab his ankle. In full panic mode now, Max didn’t even look back, he just kicked his foot loose. Quickly, he pushed himself off the ground, sprinting away from the monster. The scenery was still glitching out around him. That was probably why he fell off the cliff. He didn’t even notice that it was before him before he fell. There was a long distance from ground. He let out a not-so-manly scream as he fell, waving his arms like it would make a difference.

Suddenly he stopped falling. Something had caught his arm, almost yanking it out of its socket. Max cracked open his eyes slowly, looking at what had caught him. It was the pixel, except it was beginning to look less and less like just a mass of pixels and more like it had an actual shape. Max was shaking from his near death experience. He even didn’t notice that the thing was slowly dragging him up. It took till he was on ground that he snapped back to reality. He couldn’t even do anything when the pixels started to pull him towards itself. He tried to free himself, but it had a tight grip on him. His vision began to blur as he grew closer to it. Darkness crept at the edges of his eyes then claimed him as the pixels enveloped him.

To be continued...